


Not Perfected in Love

by lilith_morgana



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angels, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Conversations, Gen, Light Angst, POV Michael, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26144950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: Two of God’s angels walk into a bar.
Comments: 22
Kudos: 111





	Not Perfected in Love

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote some fic to work out some thoughts about Lucifer and Michael because what is fic for if not for meta? 
> 
> Title comes from the Bible passage: _“There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. The one who fears has not been perfected in love.”_ (1. John. 4-18.)
> 
> I imagine this is set somewhere between A City of Angels and S1.

  
  


Here’s the thing about fear: it used to translate to ‘ _regard God with reverence and awe_ ’.  
  
Translate to gardens in the Silver City where Uriel and Azrael would cheat at every game they ever came up with and be punished by Amenadiel while Michael laughed, to creations witnessed by his Father’s side and the sensation of true wonder like a whisper inside his very being, to sparring with Samael and beating him, sometimes actually _beating_ him and they had both been undaunted back then, unbroken, unaware of the battles to come.  
  
It’s a long, long time ago now but Michael had feared God, oh, he _had_.  
  
  
  
*  
  
  


The streets look like they’re made out of nothing but neon and glass and uncountable - well, not to _him_ \- lights littered across every surface in wasteful displays. It’s as if they need everything spelled out for them to find their ways down here. The rest of the city is much the same, vulgar and unintelligent, a ruin of human idiocy.

It figures he'll find his unworthy brother here.

Earth has never appealed to Michael the way it appeals to the King of Hell but he’s no stranger to it and Earth is certainly no stranger to the decayed strands of his celestial powers that are tied around every country down here, binding the continents together. Oh, the fears they create to destroy each other now that they have forgotten their place. 

In itself, fear is pure. It’s a humble recognition of a higher power, an acceptance of the truth that there is a right and a wrong.  
  
At least it used to be.

But reality is not fixed and things change, even things once created by God. 

The bar where he tracks down his brother is definitely created by humans. It _reeks_ of them, of alcohol and sweat and fabricated scents, of all their stupid pleasures that Lucifer Morningstar loves so much.   
  
Michael sees him in the middle of the room, tall and proud, like a beacon.  
  
There are four scantily clad women surrounding him, their skin glittering in the artificial lights that have been made to look like the night sky. Because of course they have. Of course Lucifer would pick a place that strokes his overinflated ego, of _course_ he preens around up here dressed like a creature of sin, careless and causeless, eager to drag everyone with him as he falls, again and again and again. 

He doesn’t mourn humanity’s downfall, he celebrates it, someone had said, longingly, up in the Silver City recently. 

Not that humanity seems to mind. 

Michael can practically _see_ Lucifer’s powers in the air around them, imagining he can taste them. Lust, joy, satisfaction; the shape is rich and round, ripe like the fruits of Eden. It’s a forcefield around him, a siren’s call, and it pulls the humans towards him with such ease that something clicks darkly in Michael’s chest. It’s one thing to watch it from afar, to observe it; it’s quite another to be subjected to it, drowning with the rest of them. _I want, I want, I want_. He wonders what it feels like on the other side, how desire lands in you; he wonders if it leaves a little bit of its weight behind the way fear does.  
  
Then the atmosphere shifts subtly. The pulsating beat of the music thins out as Michael makes his way through the room, the threads that hold them all together shudder and snap. Unbridled, his powers smash the lies and the illusions, tear everything apart as they bare the naked terrors beneath. Even fully mastered, it simmers there, an ominous shadow that everyone tries to ignore.  
  
Some of them - the ones with less practice or more anxiety - cannot conceal their discomfort. Others merely move out of his way, averting their eyes.  
  
This bar, tonight, is no different.  
  
A bearded man startles as Michael takes a seat nearby while the woman beside him gets up and leaves. He can notice a few other guests staring, trying to look away but failing and becoming increasingly desperate the longer they’re involuntarily drawn to him and the grotesque appeal of his form. He does his best to contain it, usually carrying it the way his brother carries desire, like an extension of himself. It’s much more difficult in a crowd like this and he feels out of practice, out of shape. It’s been too long but he’s been busy in Heaven, or at least busy pretending he is. 

Finally the only one he wants attention from also seems to register his presence. Michael watches as his twin releases himself from the female company of the might. Or hour, more likely.  
  
When he crosses the floor, all eyes are on him.  
  
“Well, if it isn’t my twisted mirror image.” Lucifer raises his drink and hunches his shoulders slightly, barely noticeable but oh, Michael sees the age-old mockery. “How’s your back?”  
  
He straightens his posture. “How’s your Hell?”   
  
“Did Amenadiel send you this time?” There’s a sharpness to his words but his face - _their_ face - remains calm and smug. It’s like he expects fanfare and fireworks every time he’s found up here, as though he’s offered them a mystery when the truth is that _nothing_ in all of Father’s creation is more predictable than Lucifer escaping from his responsibilities. “I was under the impression that he had begun to enjoy the thrill of the hunt. Chasing the Devil and all that."

Whatever they are now, they were angels once, both of them God’s angels, and everything had always been a game to the lightbringer. A dare, a challenge, a warped sort of competition as they all knew, _all_ of them already _knew_ that Lucifer was the most loved, the brightest burning, the Morning Star. Yet he kept chasing, kept betting, kept pretending. It hadn't been enough to hold Father's undivided attention and Mother's adoration, he had thought he had the right to even _more_ , had demanded a whole display of victories to match his boundless pride. _Insatiable._ Michael bites back a growl. There’s still rage there, hot and bitter, echoing back from the beginning of time. 

Michael sneers, he can’t help it. “Still overestimating your appeal, I see.” 

"Well,” Lucifer drawls, eyeing the half-naked creatures that are still dancing around him, occasionally sliding a hand over his chest or touching his hair. He looks like a painting of depravity. Driving the humans out of Eden hadn't been sufficient for the angel of the morning, certainly not. He has to keep pushing, so _sure_ someone else will clean up the mess. “Can you blame me?”

“What do you want?” he asks, then, moving his gaze to Michael’s face that almost always shrivels up into a grimace in his magnificent brother’s company.  
  
Yeah, isn’t that the million dollar question, he thinks and stares into the glass appearing in front of him, quietly observing as the bartender fills it with vodka. Neat, with a slice of lemon. 

What does Archangel Michael of the Heavenly Host truly desire?

Not for the first time in recent centuries, he wishes Father would still talk to him. Talk to anyone, really, as long as it's not his favorite son. The Silver City was not made for the kind of silence that breeds doubt.

"You've been absent from your position for too long this time," he says, wondering how Amenadiel can stand doing this shitty job as often as he does.  
  
As far as Michael knows, their self-righteous big brother hasn't even lit up his warding duties by amusing himself like Michael either. Michael who’s taking the chance to impersonate Lucifer every now and then, to liven up the tedious eternity and make memories that will sustain him through nights like this one.  
  
 _Bloody hell, Mr Franco, what a delightful soiree. Such a lovely evening, Mrs Thatcher, I do love your necklace._

It's almost too easy to make another stain on the Devil’s tarnished reputation. Michael doesn't even _do_ anything, he just meets the wrong people, visits the wrong places, makes certain to appear in a photograph or at least a drawing. Humans do the rest. They’re so incredibly useful when they’re scared.  
  
His brother shakes his head and finishes his drink. "I wasn't aware your opinion mattered to, well, _anyone_."  
  
"It's clear you haven't been to the Silver City in a few millennia, _Samael_ ," Michael says, forging the hated name as a blade.

His words are thin and hollow to his own ears but he’s got to work with what he has. 

Lies and fear against the shining one.

Michael had known almost from the start how the rebellion would go, could see the doomed cause in their eyes, in their certain postures and mighty sword arms. He had understood - with a peculiar rush of grief and shame and triumphant _glee_ \- that the rebellion would turn Heaven against his twin brother, that he would _finally_ answer for his arrogance and pride. 

Eons later and Michael still sees Lucifer fighting the Host with every last scrap of power left in him, sees him unbowed in front of Father, sees him throwing his sword to the ground. He had looked lonely then, his outline against the sky a desolate sight, the betrayal like scars on his perfect skin. But even so, there were swords and bows at his back, there were unwavering faces and hands on Lucifer's shoulder and they fell with him, they fell as one.

Of course they did. 

There had been almost no one that _agreed_ with his brother or wanted his bloodshed and casualties of war, his rousing speeches and mismanaged fury, but they had loved him, oh how they had _loved_ him. 

Michael, loveless by heavenly design, had not counted on that.

Mother, afterwards, with devastation burning through her entire being, Mother who had turned away at the sight of his face - _their_ face - and never looked at him again. 

Azrael, afterwards, cornering him with her silly, unearned sword shivering in her hands, mouth trembling. Angels do not weep outside of sentimental human tales, but she had. _You didn't have to fight him, you didn't._

Raphael, afterwards, with gracious fingers ghosting over Michael’s injuries, offering to heal the worst damage and Michael had slammed him down with what little remaining strength he possessed, had smashed his brother's solemn face with his bloodied fists, tore at his silvery wings with his broken ones. 

_No_ , he had said. _Leave me alone_. 

And they had.

Of course they had. 

"Amenadiel, the great sap, thinks you're up here trying to do good." Michael laughs, harshly, waiting for a reaction. "Said you’re seeing the errors of your way. We thought he was joking at first, he was always easy to fool. And, look at you, it turns out he’s wrong - again. You're only here to drink and fuck."

A shade crosses Lucifer’s face, something lighting up in his eyes. For someone as fearful as his twin brother - _what if He's right, what if there is nothing good in me, what if I made them all suffer like this_ \- he sure has great command of himself. 

“Guilty as charged," he says and there’s a glint of nastiness in his gaze, poison twisted around his words. "You should try it, Michael. Consider it rehearsal for your next understudy as Lucifer Morningstar. Wouldn’t want my sexual reputation tarnished by your fumbling act. Can you _imagine_ the amount of complaints?"  
  
Michael looks down. The glass he’s been cradling in his hand breaks, soundlessly, his knuckles still pale from the effort of clutching it so hard; the splinters prickling his skin in a hundred different places.  
  
“It’s still just about you, isn’t it?” he asks, wiping his hand clean. "All of your visits here, every sexcapade and party - it's not for them. It's all for _you_ . You're such a sycophantic bastard that you can't even _stand_ the thought of being a creature they fear, can you?”  
  
Lucifer’s gaze sharpens, something slips behind something else in there.  
  
“They don't _have_ to fear me up here, what’s the point?"  
  
He almost sneers at his own lack of conviction, hollowed out by millennia of silence from the God he is meant to fight for, the Word he is created to spread. _Then what, Oh Heavenly Father, is the point of it all? What is the point of me?_ _  
_  
"Well," Michael says, unable to keep the frustration out of his voice. "They _should_ fear the Devil. And they should fear Father." _  
_

Lucifer looks at him with a distaste that mirrors his own.

“Now that is just disappointing, Michael. You spend literal eons up in Heaven, grovelling and sniveling - ‘doing your thing’, isn’t that what you used to call it? _All_ that time, and this is the best you come up with?” He pours himself a massive drink from a bottle he snatches from behind the bar and makes an ugly face as he mimics Michael’s voice. “They should fear the Devil.”  
  
“Yes, we can’t all be as innovative as you, I guess.” Michael gets another drink in front of him and empties it within seconds, orders another. After downing the second glass of vodka, he leans back and rubs the muscles in his upper arm through the jacket he wears.  
  
His form aches, the ridiculous body he's stuck in always hurts in some fashion and it only gets worse the longer he's down here where the physical aspects of it matter endlessly. He's even slower among the humans where he can’t draw too much from his powers to compensate; he’s twitching and limping and in _pain_ and the cruelty of it feels so very jarring compared to Lucifer's grace and beauty. 

His brother looks longingly at the women again, then back at him and then, to Michael's surprise, two of the guests walk up to where they're seated. He blinks, pushes back any stray strands of his power. He reckons Lucifer does the same and for a beat, he can sense them intermingling in the atmosphere, balancing off each other, sending tiny sparks of energy back. Sometimes they would do this in the Silver City, he remembers suddenly, comparing and colliding their skills, not to harm but to _study_ ; there’s a peculiar sort of nostalgia tied to the memory.  
  
“Hello, _ladies_ ,” Lucifer says, the smoothness of his voice sliding over the human minds as a gentle comfort.  
  
But it can’t conceal the celestial powers at work in this bar, not completely. Through the strange haze of their combined powers, Michael begins to sense his brother’s effect on the women: a soft, pleasant buzz at first, slowly increasing into a whisper. One of them wants something he can’t quite discern - desire is much more muddled than fear, interlaced with shame because humans are idiots - but it’s colorful and soft and her want feels like sunlight. The other one’s sharper, she wants someone - anyone - to take her, kiss her, hold her. _I’m afraid no one ever will again._ _  
_

It’s a small thing, such a banal human thing: a hand on his arm. He can't even recall the last time anyone touched him and isn't prepared for the reaction.  
  
A hand on his arm, and a little tear in his composure. It's deeply unworthy and it makes him want to throw her across the room for exposing it to himself, to Lucifer. But he doesn’t, he just pulls back and closes in on himself. He could say something, he thinks momentarily, he could say something to distract them or crack one of his brother’s inane jokes. 

Instead the sunlight woman meets his gaze and for a fraction of a second Michael can see her cowering before a faceless man, using her body as a shield to protect two tiny kids, her voice silenced in fear but he can hear everything. _He will kill them, he will kill them, he will kill me_. The woman’s friend, the untouched one, opens her mouth as if to scream but there are no words. 

"Oh my _God_ ," the sunlight woman exclaims in her place, grabbing her friend's hand. "Get _away_ from me!"

With a muffled whimper, the women leave.

Lucifer looks confused and slightly troubled as his gaze follows them all the way to the exit; he looks troubled, still, as he regards Michael again. 

“That’s not usually how it goes. Well, not for _me_ , at least.” He adjusts the suit, tugging at the breast pocket and running a hand over his hair. He’s more peacock than angel, always was. “What did you do?”

Michael scoffs. The vodka left burns briefly at the back of his throat. He puts the glass down with a dull clicking sound.

Once, his powers were different.  
  
Once, _he_ was different, or more himself, just like Lucifer was Samael and made stars from scattered dust.

It’s no use to dwell on that, though, because whatever fear used to be before Father turned away from humanity or humanity from Father, it is now _this_. 

Over the years he's refined his own skills, developed more strategies, better methods. Honed the weapons he was left with. If he used his powers now, he knows, the entire room would feel it. Not as panic, not necessarily, but as discomfort and anxiety, that chilling suggestion in your head telling you to be vigilant. They’d bare themselves to him, offer their naked souls for him to scrutinize. And oh, they fear so _much_. 

“Is this how people usually react?” Lucifer looks genuinely surprised.

"Yes."

" _All_ of them?"

"Everyone." Michael makes a sweeping gesture, realising his wretched arm is cramping again, no matter how much he wills it not to. So much for self-actualization. Or perhaps it only works for those pure of heart or some other bullshit from the dawn of time. He holds his arm steady with his left hand, without looking up. “Have you ever _considered_ my powers, Lucifer? In you they-” he pauses, swallows a sense of absolute fury as well as the impulse to wring his twin’s neck. As if he _could_ . “In you they see what they desire, everything they want, everything they can imagine in their thick little heads. And in me - _well_ .”  
  
A beat of silence.  
  
“It bothers you.” Lucifer looks at him, brow furrowed and that disdainful look partly gone, replaced with something Michael definitely doesn’t want. Pity. He had looked at Michael that same way in the Silver City, right before he was cast out. _You’re on your own now, brother._ After all the bitter, vicious fighting, after every betrayal they had hurled at each other, that same guilty compassion on his stupid face, carrying the shape of a half-baked apology. Like Michael doesn't deserve hatred or fear, like he’s some perpetually flawed, broken bit of Creation that needs fixing. _Aren’t you, Mikey?_ “Oh, but it _does_.”  
  
“ _Stop_." He hears the word twisted like a snarl.  
  
Michael pushes to his feet, knocking over a chair as he maneuvers himself away. This is the last time, he swears, this is the last time he will choke on his own inferiority in front of his twin. Next time, things will go differently.  
  
“Michael-”  
  
“Go back to hell, _Samael_ ,” he says, stalking out of the bar without looking over his shoulder. He doesn’t have to; he knows he’s not being followed. 

  
  
*  
  
  


Here’s the thing about fear: it used to translate to ‘ _regard God with reverence and awe_ ’.  
  
Nobody wishes more than Michael that it still did.


End file.
